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Recordings

Schumann’s songs are among the greatest musical achievements of the nineteeth century, and this is the perfect release with which to mark the composer’s 200th birthday. This marvellous collection comprises Schumann’s complete songs, presented for ...» More

Graham Johnson’s monumental and triumphant complete Schumann Songs edition comes to an end with this eleventh disc, featuring Hanno Müller-Brachmann. A devoted lieder singer who has performed with some of the world’s greatest pianists, Brachmann i ...» More

'Schäfer evokes comparison with Elisabeth Schumann and with the young Elly Ameling, whom in tone and freshness of response she often resembles. In sum ...'Her voice combines ethereal radiance and clarity with resolute, unwavering focus. Johnson's account of the piano parts is superlative [and] his bookl ...» More

With this music composed in May 1850 we seem to plunge into an entirely new Schumann style. A storm lours on the horizon and it is easy to forget that it was with this image that In der Fremde had also begun, the first song in the Eichendorff Liederkreis Op 39, composed a decade earlier to the very month. In that case a simple rolling F sharp minor arpeggio with the addition of right-hand accents had to suffice in order to convey the sight and sound of distant thunder in the evening sky. Both songs are marked Nicht schnell but in his Op 89 Schumann has a new arsenal at his disposal—namely, the use of enriched chromatic harmony and the devices of thematic transformation. The result is a new density of texture and an eloquence of an altered kind that is not immediately recognizable to those whose knowledge of the Schumann songs is confined to the creations of 1840. Very few people would know of the existence of a major vocal work by Schumann between these two cycles—namely the opera Genoveva, given its first performance shortly after this song was written—and that this opera is written in the manner it is largely because of the influence of Richard Wagner.

The key of the song is C sharp minor but it begins in the dominant and moves to the tonic in the second bar. A rumble of semiquavers oscillates in the right hand. An ominous and significant four-note theme appears in the bass in adjacent notes—F double-sharp–G sharp–A–back to G sharp—a melody that is doubled at a distance of an octave in the right hand otherwise busy with stormy oscillations. This is something like a fate motif that pervades the song and appears at various pitches (as in bars 3–4 where we hear it a third higher) and in both augmentation (the minims of bars 23–4) and diminution (the quavers of bar 13, the triplets of bar 25). The voice enters in the second bar—the shape of the vocal line (beginning G sharp–C double-sharp–D sharp) clearly influenced by the ‘fate’ motif with its double-sharp rising a semitone to the note above. Using these strands of half melody and a generally unsettled Bewegung the composer constructs a tense and tight weave of a song where that long-familiar side of Schumann’s music which owes something to the counterpoint of Bach meets the Leitmotif ideas of Wagner. This unfamiliar melange can seem slightly off-putting but in this case it is undeniably exciting. The decrescendo of the song’s last page is very effective: as the crimson colouring drains from the picture and is replaced by black we hear (underneath the words ‘Schwarz ist sie und grausenhaft’) the opening motif twice traced within the rumbling semiquavers of the left hand. The song comes to an end with an oscillating shudder; when von der Neun writes of a dark horizon (‘The sun is fearsome and black’) he is speaking of a country where there are few prospects for the light of freedom.

The song is about leaving without saying goodbye—the act of departing suddenly and secretly—a dream suddenly evaporating in the cruel light of day. The poem is surely a metaphor for the terrible disappointments of May 1849 when all hopes of change were dashed in Dresden and the dreamed-of reforms that seemed possible for a short, sweet while vanished without trace.

The marking is Nicht zu schnell and the key A major—the mood more delicate than anything else in the von der Neun songs. Schumann looks back here to his Dichterliebe style with a fragile filigree of descending semiquaver triplets that are reminiscent of Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen from Dichterliebe; that beautiful Rückert setting Die Blume der Ergebung Op 83 No 2 also comes to mind. And yet this von der Neun song somehow fails to achieve the naturalness and ease of either of these more famous settings with their common theme of rueful acceptance and submission. This is a mood shared to an extent by Heimliches Verschwinden, the most ‘innig’ and rapt of the Op 89 songs, but the setting as a whole remains too theoretical and never moves the heart. The problem about poems that convey a coded message is that they can all too easily end up by being too convoluted to convey any direct message or emotion.

The pianist is required throughout to bring out right-hand melodies with the little finger, particularly between the vocal phrases, although he must take care not to overbalance the singer when the piano-writing doubles the voice, as it frequently does. Apart from a few select passages (such as the music for ‘Sommers Tyrannei’) the vocal line and accompaniment seem always to be moving in a downward direction as if the essence of spring was not so much leaving the picture as draining out of it drop by drop, each of the accompanying semiquavers like a globule hanging for a moment on the drip-dry landscape and then falling into an invisible reservoir at the bottom-left of the keyboard. Schumann has taken some trouble to write a good many rests in the accompaniment and a certain amount of mezzo staccato articulation. This suggests a sparing use of pedal and a lightness of texture, something the voice—particularly if not a soprano—has to work hard to match.

This song is similar in many respects to the first of the opus, Es stürmet am Abendhimmel in the same original key of C sharp minor: it is held together by a motif—hardly a very distinguished one—that is placed between the first and second bars. On the page the song looks like an orchestral short score: oscillating strings in the pianist’s right hand leave the left hand free to concentrate on the said motif, adjacent notes bound together by a gently tripping figuration (dotted quaver, plus semiquaver and two quavers, and then the same again—eight notes in all) that might be played by the cello section of an orchestra in alternation with the bassoons.

The marking is Mässig and the mood is more gentle and thoughtful than the first song in the cycle. The sparseness of the texture of the opening (autumnal, as if leaves had already fallen from denuded trees) and the way the vocal line is ornamented by a flip of demisemiquavers on the word ‘Tannen’ give a Schubertian feeling to the proceedings, an impression aided by a classical layout and the tightness of the rhythm. In a concert contrasting Schubert and Schumann settings an ideal twin for this song would be Schubert’s Herbst (Rellstab) where right-hand semiquavers, also a third apart, rustle their plaint from an autumn twenty-two years earlier. The way the poem’s lines are made to unfold in fits and starts (enabling interjections by the all-important left-hand motif) seems eccentric—as if the poet is speaking in disjointed phrases and stumbling as a result of his Weltschmerz. The word ‘Wehmut’ (‘sadness’) in bar 8 is echoed by a pair of octaves sighing in sympathy in the left hand, but this is only a passing detail. The important thing is that after twelve bars the song embarks on a new section with the word ‘Nimmer!’, here set as something of a sudden outburst.

Spread arpeggios under a vocal line (the vocal embellishment of ‘Walde’ surprisingly old-fashioned) signify minstrelsy of the Middle Ages (as is usually the case when Schumann is in ballad mode). A new fragment of melody in the piano’s right hand (bars 15–16) combines with rising arpeggios (bars 16–17 and 17–18) to reflect the consolatory tidings that emerge from the forest. The melody heard in bars 16–17 will appear again in this opus in the piano-writing of Röselein, Röselein!, evidence of a half-hearted attempt to cross-reference themes within the different numbers of the same work—a practice that also emerges (although with little consistency) in Minnespiel. In bar 19 we hear the dotted rhythm of the opening motif again as the composer attempts in a lukewarm Wagnerian manner to combine the two main ideas of the song in a single musical entity. The powerlessness of the sun (from bar 25) is rendered by dry staccato chords and an abbreviated version of the same opening autumnal motif. All this is leading up to a major lyrical outburst at bar 32 with a change of key-signature to five flats. This closely resembles the elegiac music of the Requiem for Lenau (Op 90 No 7) where a lyrical vocal line is similarly accompanied by rolling chords, harp-inspired and ingeniously apportioned between the hands. After six bars of this music (at bar 37 to be precise) the dotted rhythm motif reasserts itself within a gentle pianissimo dynamic and only for three bars. This is surely to signify the presence of autumn; as far as this song is concerned the season is a character and reminds the listener of its existence as if it were a person.

The conclusion of Herbstlied achieves a kind of lofty and airy grandeur (reflecting the word ‘Farbenpracht’) that is once again reminiscent of the climactic passages of Requiem. For the postlude the accompaniment immediately retreats into a much more diffident piano dynamic. Four and three bars from the end in a six-bar postlude the dotted-rhythm motif makes its last appearance as if to remind us that the inscrutable workings of nature and autumn itself are contained within every aspect of the forest’s life.

The marking is Ziemlich langsam and the key is B flat minor. The music in its mournful other-worldliness is prophetic of the Pfarrius setting Warnung of 1851 where a lone screech-owl sings in the forest. On the page the song is more conventional than the others in the von der Neun set apart from the fact that after four bars of introduction it is a monologue for a traveller addressing the forest. Of all the von der Neun songs this calls for a male voice with the greatest certainty—the ‘Wanderer’ in this instance almost a miniature precursor of Wotan. In musical terms it is all about melody and counter-melody with the vocal line a descant to what is almost a piano piece in its own right. There is no attempt at writing a conventionally memorable melody despite the final line of the poem which may be thought to call for just that. The singer here moves around the stave mostly in adjacent intervals but there is a continual sense of canon, imitation and counterpoint, even if none of these hints of sophistication ever develops and amounts to much. The piano and voice (and sometimes the two hands of the pianist in relation to each other) always seem to be a beat apart—either in front or behind. This seems to promise a kind of musical unfolding that never really materializes. It is clear that Schumann at this stage of his career is obsessed with layers and their potential multiple meaning. A lot of this derives from the composer’s study of Bach, as we have seen from songs as early as Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome from Dichterliebe and Zwielicht from the Eichendorff Liederkreis. But here certain elements of chorale and counterpoint are tentatively combined with the continual melody (and sometimes non-melody) of Wagnerian inspiration. The parameters of this short song are such that apart from its chromatic twists and turns one might scarcely identify it as coming from the late period.

In the political context in which these poems were written this song is about liberty and freedom from oppression. Accordingly we have trumpet calls and martial gestures fit for Florestan’s release from captivity. The marking is Frisch, the key a resolute B flat major—although the tonic chord is heard in second inversion over three bars before sinking to root position only in order to support the entry of the voice. Details such as these, ungainly more than ugly, awkward rather than ineffective, are typical of the songs from this period; in fact Schumann has done this kind of thing better in the past—in the more hearty of the Justinus Kerner settings, for example. Nothing here strikes us as very original; arpeggios and dotted rhythms stride up the stave and the voice part is doubled, no doubt in an attempt to convey the feeling of constraint (‘Mir ist’s so eng allüberall!’) implicit in the text, and no doubt a code for political shackles. However Schumann does not convey any of the panic that also may be read into the poet’s opening words. There are syncopated rhythms to spur the singer out of the gloomy city walls (at ‘Aus düstrer Mauern’) and even a jangling trill (bars 19–20) in the interlude between the first and second verse, but this is much huff and puff rather than music of any real substance.

The poem’s second verse prances in coquettish manner to a staccato accompaniment. Where have we heard this music before? At ‘Da flattert aus der offnen Brust’ it takes a few moments to recognize a passage from the song of the flibbertigibbet actress Philine from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister (a free spirit if ever there was one), as well as the staccato accompaniment for her vocal line. After these twelve contrasting bars the music returns to the grandeur of the opening. Schumann ignores the poet’s third verse and repeats the first verse in order to emphasize the word ‘Lieder’ for the triumphant peroration. Schumann has read (and set) the text as if it were the very act of composing songs that will give him back his freedom—and perhaps so it seemed to him at the time. Finely sung this song can make something of an impression; despite its strange corners it can sound visionary in the right pair (or two pairs) of interpretative hands.

Rose, little rose,
why must you bear thorns?
Thus musing, I once fell asleep
by a shady brook, and in my dreams
I saw, standing in golden sunshine,
a thornless rose.
And I plucked and kissed it;
a thornless rose!

Then I awoke and looked around.
I knew I had seen one; where was it?
All around, near and far in the sunshine
stood roses, all with thorns!
And the brook laughed at me:
‘Leave your dreaming;
you may be sure
that all roses have thorns.’

The very first words we hear (‘Röselein, Röselein’) are unaccompanied. This brings to mind the phrase ‘O Röschen rot’ which begins the fourth movement (Urlicht from Des Knaben Wunderhorn) of Mahler’s Second Symphony and which is accompanied only by the softest strings before the emergence of the full orchestra. In both cases, addressing the rose in hushed tones is a magical incantation where the flower is a symbol for much more than its decorative function in the garden. The question ‘Why must you bear thorns?’ is a wistful acknowledgement that everything beautiful and sweet in life has its dark shadow and its cost, and the message of the song is that it is only a dream to suppose otherwise. The famous Schubert song Heidenröslein makes a similiar point less wistfully and rather more cogently in connection with the rose’s ability to wound and infect those who touch it. Schumann was arguably a syphilitic, and a Haushaltbuch entry (perhaps significantly marked ‘Day of Rest, Day of Repentance’) tells us that the composer thought about this poem or perhaps read it (or heard it sung in Schubert’s setting) on 9 March 1849.

As every commentator has pointed out, the poems which Schumann used for his Op 89 set are not of the highest quality (‘sentimental magazine verses notable only for their bombast or bathos’ in the words of Eric Sams) and yet there is a perfume in this song which can be released under the hands of sensitive performers. In the Schumann Lieder of this period one finds echoes of earlier masterpieces and earlier influences. It only takes a key word like ‘dreaming’ to muster the similarities. Thus directly after ‘zu süssem Träumen ein’ a delicate little interpolation of flowing semiquavers in the accompaniment is decorated with a mordant and complemented with mezzo-staccato quavers; these bring to mind the accompanying music for the equally flowery ‘Veilchen träumen schon, wollen balde kommen’ in the Mörike setting Er ist’s composed the year before and heard later on this disc. This song also influenced future creations: in some ways it is a study for the Lenau setting Meine Rose which has the advantage of an infinitely greater poem. The change from A major to C major at ‘Ich erwacht’ und schaute drein’ in Röselein, Röselein! brings to mind the comparable change from B flat to G flat major (and back again) in the later song.

In October 1849 Schumann had marked the death of Chopin in the Haushaltbuch. He had attempted to arrange a memorial service for the composer in the Dresden Frauenkirche without success (the authorities would not permit it). One is tempted to think of the musical style of this song (as well as the slightly later Meine Rose) as somehow prompted by a homage to a great artist dead before his time—a flower withered on the stem. (See also the commentary on the Lenau Einsamkeit in connection with Chopin). The time-signature of 3/4 and the improvisatory nature of the piano writing evoke the world of the Chopin Mazurkas—sometimes courtly and stately in quavers, sometimes given to flights of the most delicate fantasy with semiquaver passages like unexpectedly-sprouting tendrils of greenery. An earthier and more downbeat side to the dance-like quality of this music, again similar to mazurka style, seems emphasised in the last two bars of the vocal part (‘müssen sein, müssen sein!’), the repetition the composer’s, not the poet’s, and an excuse to include the mournful sequence which is characteristic of Schumann’s attempts to mirror the cadence of speech. The extraordinary postlude consists of a phrase high in the treble clef which is repeated a fifth lower in such a way as to suggest a pair of composer-pianists answering each other antiphonally on two instruments.This idea of impossible, dreamed-of dialogue recalls the postlude of Intermezzo (also in A major) from the Liederkreis Op 39. Both pieces of music seem to sum up the poignant distance between dream and reality.

Gerald Abraham has perceptively written: ‘Schumann’s early music—and much of the later—is full of enigmas, musical quotations (usually in subtle disguises), and veiled allusions. In the field of the piano miniature and the pianistic song, he is a supreme master; in the simpler kind of lyrical inspiration and in the invention of musical aphorisms, he has seldom been surpassed.’ It is obviously important that the student of Schumann’s songs should be able to understand and identify these aphorisms. Eric Sams’s work on musical motifs in Schumann’s song output has helped us to understand the creative mind of this composer as surely as a study of Wagner could not be complete without a study of his Leitmotif technique. The listener is urged to read the opening chapters of Sams’s The Songs of Robert Schumann (Faber, 1993) for a full explication of this fascinating topic.